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The Big Easy Meetup
After Rob Long bought drinks for a few new members Friday night in New Orleans, about 30 Ricochet faithful gathered for a convivial podcast with Rob, Charles C.W. Cooke, and Ricochet Meetup organizer Randy Weivoda to chat about our community. It was a great night, with about 30 people in attendance, and everyone had a chance to join the conversation live. If you’re reading about this at home, you missed something extraordinary, but there’s always next time!
There should be a podcast from it.
Randy Weivoda is a wonderful person, and I say that without ever having met him! So glad he was there. Melissa, thanks for this post!
This gives Charlie a chance to meet us and see what we’re really like. Oh, wait, is that wise?
Look for it soon. The recordings are being processed :)
Kudos to Randy Weivoda for his successful venture.
We usually are limited to admiring intellectual skill and entrepreneurial skill separately. They tend to be mutually exclusive.
So we greatly admire someone who has benefitted his fellow man by having both!
😍😍😍
It was a great time. Joey K’s was terrific, especially the fried catfish and the shrimp & crawfish ettouffee.
I was busy checking names off the list, collecting money, and handing out names badges, passport stickers & passport booklets, and explaining the Ricochet Meetup Passport concept so I didn’t have time to visit with everyone I wanted to. But it was great.
I didn’t look at my phone for a couple hours and after the party I checked my phone and saw a text message from a Ricochet member not in attendance, asking me to give @charlescwcooke a big kiss from her. Sadly, his car had just left when I read the message, so I couldn’t deliver on that request.
Randy works hard on organizing fun and interesting things to do on meetups -yesterday we enjoyed a tour of the Garden District surrounding Layfayette Cemetary, then ate lunch with Charles C.W. Cooke. The New Orleans Meetup is ongoing and will last throughout the weekend during the 40th French Quarter Festival
Very enjoyable time. Randy, thank you for putting this all together.
More cannon.
Sounds like you still have a chance, unless Charles isn’t coming back.
Charles had to fly home this morning.
No. No, it is not…
Tonight, ordering a great meal at Katie’s Restaurant, then tomorrow some will visit the National WWll Museum.
This meetup was and is awesome.
I know a lot of people were hoping to see Dave Carter (and his truck) – I certainly was. However, I heard that he will be interviewed by Whiskey Dave (formerly host of Ricochet’s Whiskey Politics podcast) while he’s guest hosting Joe Messina’s nationally syndicated radio show (The Real Side) this Wednesday 4/19/23 It’s a late night call-in show, looks like 11PM Central, so you can call up the Daves and say hello!
Boy that looked like fun! I just went to an epic Meet-Up with Jon Gabriel in the Phoenix area. I would love for Charlie and any of the founders to do a meet-up in Phoenix, or Southern California. (Yes, I would drive to SoCal to go to a Meet-Up with Charlie and any of the founders.)
@stad has written a post detailing the Louisiana cooking class that we took.
Lots of fun! I only snapped a few pictures, mostly from the late night Frenchmen Street portion of Friday. Saturday was excellent, too. And it turns out Tim and I aren’t the only locals. So a few words to the traveling Ricochetti: let us know if you’re visiting Nola. There are a handful of us who will happily show you around.
Hope we can do another meetup around these parts soon.
I’m kind of wiped out right now, so I’ll probably write more later. I want to thank everyone who came. I’m sorry I didn’t have a chance to visit with everyone. It was a lot of fun, and as expected, the food in New Orleans is fab-u-lous. Not so fabulous: the street maintenance. I wouldn’t have been surprised to have discovered wheels and tires along the side of the road that had just broken off from cars. The city slogan should be “World Class Food and Third World Pavement.”
What is Charlie lugging around in that tattered cardboard box?
I think he collects the fingers of members and employees who commit infractions. A digit per infraction… Something like that.
Or he might’ve been gifted something on Friday. Who can remember?
Whatever it is, avoid the fate of Pandora, the last gal who wanted to know what was inside the box!
Maybe The Thing That Couldn’t Die?
Knowing that Charles is a fan of the Porsche 911, someone brought him a model of the 911 GT3 RS dressed up with Ricochet and Astroluxe decals to make it look like a race car. Melissa bought Rob Long a t-shirt that says (as I recall) “I drink Martinis and know things.”
I would definitely urge people to do this. Meetups can happen on the fly, like when @grannydude came to Mt. Pleasant, SC to give a talk. Neutral observer and I decided to go down there and meet her. Had dinner together the first night, then took in her talk the next day (I wrote a post about it, but forgot the title so I can’t link it for you).
Amen!
I was going to look it up, but you have so many posts, and without knowing at least what year it was, it’s a big project.
It is here.
NICE pics!
“Knowing that Charles is a fan of the Porsche 911, someone brought him a model of the 911 GT3 RS dressed up with Ricochet and Astroluxe decals to make it look like a race car. “
Gee, I wonder who was so thoughtful to not only manage and execute a perfect meetup but to carefully craft a cool custom gift???
You are the best, Randy.